Kids First receives grant (sunday)

Kathleen ThurberMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 9:00 pm, Saturday, December 26, 2009

Program receives $10,000 grant to help serve area families.

By Kathleen Thurber

Staff Writer

As Reggie Webb kicked the soccer ball with his 12-year-old daughter while his 10-year-old finished crafting a Christmas card one recent Thursday evening, Foster Grandparent Mary McFarlin watched from the doorway and smiled.

"It's fun when you come and see the parents and kids involved," McFarlin said, turning her gaze to the adjoining room where a father shared pizza with his two kids. "When you see the families grow closer together it's good."

Across the hall at Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity, where the program meets, Geneva Mills or "Granny G" shifted her video camera as she observed while a mother and her 11-year-old daughter finished a craft.

The two are among a group of Midland's Foster Grandparents who have added volunteering at Centers for Children and Families' Kids First Program to their list of weekly activities. The program, which recently received a $10,000 grant from the Texas Bar Foundation, provides supervised visitation for non-custodial parents.

And while Kids First's directors and the Foster Grandparent volunteers said the circumstances that make such a program necessary can be heartbreaking, focusing on the children and the relationships they form with their parent is the key.

"At the end of the day you just want it to work best for the kids," said the program's director Carol Taylor.

Amanda Gunter, who also helps run the Kids First visits, said both the volunteer support of the Foster Grandparents and the monetary support recently provided by the Texas Bar Foundation are greatly needed.

Parents, who are allowed only to see their children through supervised visits because of a court mandate, are charged for the program based on a sliding scale in accordance with their income, she said. Most pay less than 13 percent of the actual cost of the program, and the Bar Foundation grant, together with United Way funds, donations and other grants, will help to cover those costs she said.

The program currently hosts up to 12 families during each of its scheduled visitation times -- on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings -- and grows depending on the court system.

In 2008, Kids First served 38 families through 520 visits. It was on pace to surpass those numbers during 2009. Some families are ordered only as little as six visits before being reevaluated and others stay with the program for years, Taylor said. In either situation they're hoping to provide children some consistency as they develop a relationship with their non-custodial parent.

Webb said he's been using the program to spend time with his daughters for more than a year now and while the circumstances aren't ideal, if it lets him see his girls it's worth it.

"That's the reason I'm doing it," he said, adding the video footage and notes the volunteers are required to take of each visit should help him when he returns to court to apply for independent visitation and custody rights.

Having never been restricted from seeing her kids, Mills said she can only imagine what the families are going through and gives of her time in hopes the visits will be constructive.

Though some of the parents are ordered to supervised visits because of previous drug or alcohol abuse, prison time or a history of abuse or neglect, Mills said volunteers are not informed of the specifics and want only to see the parents develop a positive relationship with their children from here on out.

"I feel like that's really important to the kids and to the parents both," she said.

She turned the video camera to follow the pair she was observing one recent evening and said it's difficult not to become attached to the families. But, she said, they're always happy to see them go if that means the parent has proven they can spend time with their kids on their own.

"The children enjoy their time together and feel like the time's not quite enough," Mills said.